I think I have to say, first up, that I never intended to imply that businesses do not need ethics. They do.

What is more, as you point out, it is impossible to ignore ethics as it these which guide and inform people’s actions, and businesses are but the creation of people.

What I’m arguing is that the idea that “ethical business” is a 21st Century business model which by itself will act as a magic salve to heal the perceived failings of 20th Century capitalism is flawed,

Many readers of Corporate Eye’s CSR blog will, quite rightly, say “well I never said that”. I use a broad brush to make a point, not to damn everybody!

The reason 20th Century capitalism has got itself into such a mess is because it ended up being all about the short term year-on-year generation of money. Building towers upon towers, without looking at the foundations.

Imagine each business as a machine: it demands various resources and produces various products .. but only the volume of little green pieces of paper truly seem to matter.

Now, a fine upstanding owner of one of these machines may have one of various ethical views on life.

For instance, a former colleague of mine once got sacked for claiming his bar tab on expenses: this was specifically highlighted as a disciplinary offence in the Company Handbook, so he had to go. That business owner’s view was perfectly clear.

Or perhaps such an owner would be one of the large number of people who believe in unregulated free-market competition, who believes totally sincerely that the more money he can make, the better the world he will create.

Life becomes very awkward, if not painful, if you place such beliefs at the centre of a new way of doing business. How strong are your ethics?

If you were the first business owner, would you not do business with anyone whose expenses regulation isn’t as severe; if the second business owner would you compromise your beliefs by engaging suppliers who hold green certification?

Does this lead us to a market where companies only trade with those whose ethics they share? Ugh … wouldn’t that make the whole thing rather, well, political?

I don’t want that. I want companies to be able to engage in free enterprise according to whatever ethics their board chooses to set for them.

But I do also believe (with apologies to business owner two) that businesses have to alter their decisions making processes to ensure the ROI does not ride roughshod over everything.

I have ethics: as a Buddhist with Catholic children I have my own bag I carry around with me. But I also believe that, for the business world, sustainability should be closer to the core of a 21st Century business model than ethics.